I like your previs analogy, because that’s how I’ve been thinking of it in my head without really knowing how to communicate it. It’s not very good at making a finished project, but it can be useful to demonstrate a direction to go in.

And actually, the one time I’ve felt I was able to use AI successfully was literally using it for previs; I had a specific idea of design I wanted for a logo, but didn’t know how to communicate it. So I created about a hundred AI iterations that eventually got close to what I wanted, handed that to my wife who is an actual artist, told her that was roughly what I was thinking about, and then she took the direction it was going in and made it an actual proper finished design. It saved us probably 15-20 iterations of going back and forth, and kept her from getting progressively more annoyed with me for saying “well… can you make it like that, but more so?”